KNOW THY SELF

VIRTUAL TEMPLE OF SHETAUT NETER

The preceding/following text is/was used
with permission from the author Dr. Na'im Akbar or publishing company
Mind Productions and he says the following in the introduction of his
book (Know Thy Self ISBN 0-935257-06-3).

Knowledge is the hallmark of civilized human life. That special
attribute which distinguishes human life from all other forms of life on
this planet is the unique ability to acquire knowledge. Knowledge is the
capacity to know oneself, and to have the ability to communicate that
knowledge to others. Other animals have the capacity to learn and to
establish new behavior that is actually only habit or action without
awareness. Human beings are capable of knowledge acquisition and this
permits them to move above the level of habit and actually gain and
trans­mit knowledge about themselves and the world that they live in,
over generations. Other forms of life may alter their genetic code by
altering their habits over sus­tained periods of time, but they are
unable to leave a record of the rationale for developing certain
patterns, mastering certain obstacles and breaking down the complexity
of some aspect of the environment.

This
remarkable and significant way of getting knowledge and passing it along
permits human beings to master their environments and themselves unlike
any other form of life. We are able to redesign much about the
environment that we live in because of our knowledge of its patterns and
its cycles. We are ulti­mately able to change ourselves and improve
ourselves unlike any other form of life because of the accumulated and
transmitted knowledge of who we are and how we function. The real mark
of civilization is in the maintenance of certain systematic knowledge
that preserves the code of how to overcome obstacles and understand
problems that reoccur in the environment. We don't have to grow another
layer of hair over the course of several generations, as the other
mammals must do in order to survive the elements. Instead, we need only
keep a mental record (an external or internal library) of how the cold
was avoided when it came before. This mental record permits each
generation to rise above those who came before because we are able to
build on the knowledge of those who have already mastered a problem.
Whereas it takes other animals literally scores of generations to alter
their instincts in order to transmit the newly discovered messages,
humans are transformed by the single discovery that is preserved and
then transmitted forevermore. Transformation can occur for the entire
human race by the one-time discovery of a bit of knowledge that makes
everyone different from that point for­ward. The discovery of the use of
fire transformed human beings from that gen­eration forward. The same
can be said about electricity, engines, flight, the cau­sation of
diseases, etc. Whereas it probably took the first birds several
thousands of years to master flying and encode it in their genes, in
just a couple of genera­tions after the Wright Brothers, every human
being on the planet is now capable of flying. Smallpox once wiped out
entire populations, but once its cause was understood, it now has the
rarity of a remote moment in history.

All
civilized groups struggle to preserve their shared or collective
infor­mation. There is recognition that the people's ability to survive
and master the obstacles of the environment is a direct consequence of
their ability to preserve their knowledge. There is also recognition
that in the process of human competi­tion for limited resources and
preserving ourselves, we must ultimately seek to gain greater knowledge
than our competitors. So each group, not only engages in the process of
developing and sharing certain knowledge, they also engage in the
concealment of knowledge which may give them enhanced effectiveness over
their competitors. Human communities must acquire and preserve the
secrets of life that ensure their survival. Each community must also be
sensitive to the excessive appetites of some groups that requires the
more modest to defend them­selves by maintaining an advantage in their
knowledge base.

Consciousness (literally translated to mean with
knowledge or knowing with others) is the internal manifestation of
knowledge. Awareness is the distin­guishing quality that differentiates
between human life that is functional and life that is dysfunctional. As
a people's shared knowledge is the criteria for assessing their level of
civilization, personal awareness is the way by which we determine
individual functioning. There is no wonder that the Ancient African
people taught the world (and later transmitted by the Greek and Roman
students of Africa) that the ultimate instruction for human growth and
transformation was: "Man know thyself." To be conscious was to be alive
and to be human. The greater the con­sciousness the higher was the
expression of ones humanity. Human beings in their highest points of
development (e.g., Egypt or Kemit; Mayans, etc.) were most noteworthy
for their devotion to the development of consciousness. These soci­eties
were distinguished by their commitment to developing images and
structures that cultivated the human consciousness. Such societies were
also famous for the devotion of large groups of people to the process of
consciousness development for the benefit of the entire society. We are
told that in the peak of Kemetic civ­ilization there were actually more
than 80,000 students who were studying the system of consciousness
development at Ipet Isut (called by the later interpreters, The Temple
of Karnak.) There is reason to believe that these ancient temples and
all of their embellishment were developed for the express purpose of
cultivating human consciousness. Even the pyramids and the mighty Sphinx
were obvious­ly more than pagan idols and Temples. It took great levels
of skill to construct these mighty structures. The failure of
contemporary efforts to duplicate these building feats suggests that
these were examples of a higher form of science than current science and
not just the clumsy efforts of a "primitive and pagan people," as some
have claimed.

Consciousness is a valued
human asset and every people seek ways to enhance their
knowledge-particularly their self-knowledge. There is a mistak­en notion
that consciousness is a finite resource and many people engage in the
hoarding of these resources under the assumption that if they don't
accumulate more than others then they will be less effective as human
beings. There has also been the discovery by some that other human
beings can be subjugated and made servile by limiting their
consciousness of themselves and by imposing certain selective aspects of
alien knowledge on others. It is the recognition of the
consequence of losing self-knowledge and being overwhelmed by the
knowledge of another group of people that inspired Dr. Carter G.
Woodson's' description of the process which he called "mis-education."
Though Dr. Woodson applied the concept of "mis-education" specifically
to the condition and circumstances of African-Americans, such a process
can ultimate­ly undermine the human endeavors of any people. In Dr.
Woodson's case study of the African-American, he demonstrated the
consequence of an entire group of people being systematically deprived
of the knowledge of themselves. He described the personal and collective
consequences in the behavior and conduct of people who lost their
self-awareness because of a process of deliberate "mis-education."

In order to correct the process of mis-education
and to heal the conse­quence of this plague, it is necessary to gain a
basic understanding of what edu­cation should be. Though there is
considerable educational philosophy and theo­ries of education that have
been offered by European-American educators, we cannot risk the use of
those theories since they have been offered by a tradition of education
which has comfortably and deliberately mis-educated African ­Americans
and other non-European people. The objective of this discussion is to
look at the process of education in a holistic way and to determine what
should be the ingredients of an effective education. We shall draw upon
the traditions of African education as a means of conceptualizing what
this educational process should entail. We shall also include concepts
from the teachings of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad and his highly
successful educational program for the Nation of Islam. We should end up
with a model for educational institutions which teach African-Americans,
as well as some guidelines for the process of the reeducation of those
African-Americans who have already been mis-educated by Institutions
that did not have their true education in mind.

Several years ago, I wrote a very popular
little pamphlet entitled From Mis-education to Education.' It was a
very brief effort to distinguish between real education and
mis-education. This pamphlet drew from Dr. Woodson's concept of
mis-education and suggested several ways that we could identify
authentic educa­tion. The ideas in From mis-education to Education
caught the imagination of many hundreds of people who had never heard of
Dr. Woodson's ideas, but imme­diately recognized some deficiencies in
their own learning which gave living proof to the concept of
mis-education. For over twenty years, I have begun my classes in "Black
Psychology" with the reading and discussion of Dr. Woodson's book, The
Miseducation of the Negro. I have found this concept of Dr. Woodson's to
be fundamental as one begins to discuss the need for an alternative way
of thinking. Though Dr. Woodson was a highly gifted scholar and graduate
of the renowned Harvard University, the book is simple, clear and
direct. It also served as the mission statement for his entire career of
seeking to correct this severe problem of the mis-educated "Negro."
Amazingly, the original document by Dr. Woodson was written in 1933, but
it is as current here at the end of the 20th century as it was during
the first half of the century. It's a timeless piece, not because the
problem is irresolvable, but because it so clearly identifies the
far-reaching behavioral, social and economic consequences of this
process. There are many contemporary African-American scholars who
strongly agree with Dr. Woodson that the continuing problem of the
African-American community is the fact that we have not secured adequate
knowledge of ourselves. Since we have been mis-educated, we do not
operate at the simplest levels of our own self-inter­est.

In the Foreword of the small book, From
Mis-education to Education, Muhammad Armiya Nu'man stated:
"Mis-education is the root of the problems of the masses of the people.
If the masses of the people were given correct knowl­edge from the very
beginning, we would not be in the condition that we find our­selves in
today."3 This a very accurate statement and it is no doubt
true, not only of the "masses," but of the leadership of the
African-American community as well. The fact that we continue to make so
many of the same mistakes over and over and operate so predictably in
opposition to ourselves can best be understood by this concept of
mis-education.

This book is going beyond the description
of the problem, however. We analyze the concept of education and
describe what should occur in the educa­tional process. We build on the
idea of the ancient sages of Kemit who declared that the foundation of
all learning was "Know thyself," and was echoed in the clear admonitions
of Elijah Muhammad that we must obtain "knowledge of self," in order to
act and respond like intelligent people. Though we do not provide in
this book a curriculum and the details for this proper education, we do
offer some clear guidelines by which we can assess whether we are
acquiring "real educa­tion" or "miseducation." We are hopeful that
through these ideas, we can begin to do what Armiya Nu'man urged, in the
Foreword of From Miseducation to Education: "(Let us) begin to think
with our own minds, and not the mind of the manipulators, and
consequently free ourselves from "miseducation."'

The objective of this publication and all of the work that I do is
intended to help restore the ability of the African-American community
in particular, and oppressed human beings in general, to once again
think with our own minds. HOTEP!!!

(The
name Egypt is a Greek name given to the Nile Valley Civilization. The
people of this Civilization identified their culture as KMT or Kemit. In
this volume, we will refer to the land of the Great Nile Valley
Civilization as Kemit as these great African people referred to
themselves)